Love it or hate it

So, it's been a while... we haven't been lazy, just so busy working on getting Warriors & Traders to board games enthusiasts and, of course, playing.

As one might guess, we're playing also other games besides Warriors & Traders. We put passion into it, we even fight and, ultimately, we learn and we enjoy.

Last Week I had the chance to play for the very first time 3 new games, all famous and all intriguing. The first and the best one was Sid Meyer's Civilization. 

It started slowly, with a 2 hours setup and with failing to understand what is what. So, we hated it, actually I will only speak for myself, I hated it. It seemed to me that if a game takes more than 180 minutes just to set up the game board, cards, armies and players, it's just too long. After a short break, I started over, this time trying to understand what I am doing. After only 1 hour, we stormed past the setup and started playing. Three hours and two liters of water later, I decided that I love this game. 

Usually board games are more interactive than single player computer games, but the later play much better. There's just more design space when you're not limited by the physical size of a box. I expected the same with Sid Meyer's Civilization, but I was wrong. It is the very first time that a board game plays better than the computer game. For all those looking for a complex strategy game, this is the answer. With the low amount of randomness and the huge amount of options, guided by one of the four possible ways to win, this game offers big space for re-playing and. This reminds me of Warriors & Traders.

I am so enthusiastic about this that I will not even say what are its minuses, very few, but noticeable.

Secondly, I got to play an incomplete game of Britannia. It was, least to say, one of the best war games I've seen. A big Bravo to the team making their way through Britain history and putting it in a box full of surprises. I will not comment more as I did not even get to finish the game (yes, it's long but it's worth your time), but I can say one thing for sure, it does not punish harshly the new player who makes a mistake in the very beginning. Even as a new player, you have a decent chance of winning or, at least, coming close.

Last but not least, I tried out Alien Frontiers. Although I am not a big fan of games with a lot of random, I had fun. We played twice, we spent three hours and we were laughing half of the time. It's not for strategy fans, it's for fun fans.

All three games have one thing in common, they generated strong reactions, some of us loved them and some of us hated them, for various reasons, from length of play, to heavy rule book or fear of loosing. But we all agreed that, whether loving or hating them, these games are from the special "make a difference" category.

This concludes my review for tonight with two promises, we'll write more often about the games we like and  soon we'll bring more news about Warriors & Traders.